AMD Linux CPU Benchmarks Dominated July From The Z1 Extreme To EPYC Genoa-X & Bergamo
July was an exciting month on the hardware side with the debut of the Genoa-X and Bergamo processors delivering magnificent performance while at the opposite side of the table the Ryzen Z1 Extreme continues to prove quite capable for gaming handhelds and other portable devices. Other popular content for July included a number of Linux kernel advancements, Intel AVX10 specifications going public, the continued fall-out and drama around the RHEL source access changes, Ubuntu tightening the belt around LXD, and much more.
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The most popular featured articles/reviews for July included:
Apple M2 On Linux Performance Against AMD Zen 4 Mobile SoCs
The most common request from my recent ROG Ally benchmarking with the Ryzen Z1 SoC and also the Ryzen 7 7840U laptop SoC testing has been wanting to know how these Zen 4 mobile processors compete with Apple's M2 on Linux. Well, for those curious, here are some initial performance figures of the Apple M2 in a MacBook Air running Asahi Linux up against the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Ryzen 7 7840U SoCs on Linux.
AMD Ryzen 7 7840U Performance Benchmarks On Linux: Great Uplift For Zen 4 Laptops
For weeks and weeks I've been eager to see how well the new AMD Zen 4 based "Phoenix" laptop SoCs function and perform under Linux. Recently I finally found an interesting AMD Ryzen 7 7840U laptop to test and today have some initial Linux benchmarks to share from this Acer Swift Edge 16 laptop with Ryzen 7 7840U SoC and a 3.2K 120Hz OLED display, among other interesting specs.
Steam Deck vs. ASUS ROG Ally Arch Linux Gaming Performance
With the ASUS ROG Ally gaming handheld that began shipping last month I've so far looked at the Linux support for this device as well as looking at the Windows 11 vs. Linux gaming performance as well as the Ryzen Z1 Extreme CPU performance. What many Phoronix readers have been most interested in seeing though are the side-by-side benchmarks for Valve's Steam Deck up against the ASUS ROG Ally. Today's benchmarks provide just that comparison plus some CPU benchmarks too.
AMD EPYC 9754 Benchmarks For The 128-Core Bergamo
In addition to the review embargo lift today for Genoa-X with our AMD EPYC 9684X benchmarks, the lift is also today on the new AMD EPYC "Bergamo" processors for offering up to 128 cores / 256 threads per socket using the new Zen 4C core. In this article is an initial look at the performance provided by the AMD EPYC 9754 128-core processors.
AMD Ryzen 7040 Series Shows Great AVX-512 Performance For Laptops / Mobile / Edge
Similar to what I have shown with the Ryzen 9 7950X AVX-512 desktop performance and AMD EPYC 9004 series AVX-512 server performance, the new Ryzen 7040 series mobile processors are exhibiting great AVX-512 performance for laptops. In today's article is a look at the performance impact when toggling AVX-512 capabilities for a Ryzen 7 7840U "Phoenix" SoC compared to toggling AVX-512 with prior Intel Tiger Lake and Ice Lake laptops that offer AVX-512.
AMD EPYC 9684X Genoa-X Provides Incredible HPC Performance
Last year AMD launched Milan-X as their first server processors with 3D V-Cache. The performance uplift from the 768MB of L3 cache per socket was phenomenal, but now here we are today with the next-generation successor: Genoa-X. The flagship EPYC 9684X is the new leader for HPC and AI performance as in addition to a 1.1GB L3 cache it leverages AMD's modern Zen 4 micro-architecture with AVX-512, 12 channel DDR5 memory, and other improvements found with existing EPYC 9004 series processors to easily triumph as the new best CPU for high performance computing from CFD and FEA to dozens of other scientific workloads. Here are the first benchmarks of the AMD EPYC 9684X processors.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 vs. AMD Radeon RX 7600 Linux Gaming Performance
This week NVIDIA and their AIB partners began shipping the GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card with pricing starting out at $299 USD. Like the recently-launched Radeon RX 7600, the RTX 4060 is geared mostly for 1080p gaming but how does it compare against the RX 7600 that is priced starting at $249? Here are some initial Linux gaming benchmarks of the GeForce RTX 4060 against the Radeon RX 7600.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 To RTX 4060 GPU Compute & Renderer Performance On Linux
Earlier this month I provided some initial GeForce RTX 4060 vs. Radeon RX 7600 Linux gaming benchmarks for this new sub-$300 graphics card. For those considering this latest Ada Lovelace graphics card for 3D rendering or compute purposes, here are some benchmarks of the GeForce RTX 4060 on that front by looking at the generational performance of the x060 series graphics cards from the RTX 4060 back to the GTX 1060.
AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Proves Very Versatile For Power/Performance - Benchmarks Against The Ryzen 7 7840U
With the ASUS ROG Ally being the first device powered by AMD's new Z1 Extreme SoC with Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics, it's been very interesting to see its performance advantages over the Steam Deck. But beyond its potential for use in gaming handhelds, it's quite fascinating to see how powerful the Z1 Extreme actually is when removing power restrictions on this SoC. In this article is a wide range of CPU benchmarks putting the Z1 Extreme up against the new Ryzen 7 7840U laptop SoC as well as prior generation Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U for reference. When adjusting the ACPI Platform Profile configuration, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme proves to be very robust from a low-power SoC delivering good battery performance up through pulling 50+ Watts while outperforming the 7840U.
SMT Proves Worthwhile Option For 128-Core AMD EPYC "Bergamo" CPUs
While the AMD EPYC 9754 "Bergamo" processor is impressive for having 128 physical Zen 4C cores, it also has Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) to provide for 256 threads per socket. Meanwhile with Ampere Altra Max and AmpereOne there is no SMT and it's likely Intel's upcoming Sierra Forest will also lack SMT (Hyper Threading) given it's an E-core-only design. But that led to my curiosity over the SMT impact for Bergamo on power and performance when leveraging SMT for the 128-core flagship EPYC 9754. Today's Bergamo benchmarking is looking at SMT on and off for both 1P and 2P server configurations.
And the most popular open-source/Linux-related news for the past month:
The Current Challenges With Using Linux On Airplanes
Currently most avionics real-time operating systems for airplanes are proprietary and very specialized for safety assurance reasons. Using Linux though and other open-source software would ease development, open more developers to being able to work on said avionics platforms, have much better documentation, and lower other barriers, but there are challenges currently involved.
AMD CPU Use Among Linux Gamers Approaching 70% Marketshare
Besides being curious about the Steam Survey results for indicating the size of the Linux gaming marketshare as an overall percentage, one of the interesting metrics we are curious about each month is the AMD vs. Intel CPU marketshare for Linux gaming. AMD has been on quite an upward trajectory among Linux gamers/enthusiasts in recent years not only for their Radeon graphics cards with their popular open-source driver stack but their Ryzen CPUs have become extremely popular with Linux users. With the new Steam Survey results for June, AMD CPUs are found on nearly 70% of Linux gaming systems polled by Steam.
Firefox 115 Now Available With Intel GPU Video Decoding On Linux
Mozilla Firefox 115.0 official builds are now available for this notable update to this open-source web browser while also marking the new Extended Support Release (ESR) series.
Google Posts Experimental Linux Code For "Device Memory TCP" - Network To/From Accelerator RAM
Google engineers have published early code around "Device Memory TCP" (a.k.a. Devmem TCP) as a proposal for transferring data to/from device memory efficiently by avoiding the need to copy the data to a host memory buffer.
The Most Prolific Packager For Alpine Linux Is Stepping Away
Alpine Linux remains one of the most popular lightweight Linux distributions built atop musl libc and Busybox. Alpine Linux has found significant use within containers and the embedded space while now sadly the most prolific maintainer of packages for the Linux distribution has decided to step down from her roles.
AlmaLinux No Longer Aims For 1:1 Compatibility With RHEL
With Red Hat now restricting access to the RHEL source repositories, AlmaLinux and other downstreams that have long provided "community" rebuilds of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with 1:1 compatibility to upstream RHEL have been left sorting out what to do.
Bcachefs File-System Plans To Try Again To Land In Linux 6.6
While the Linux 6.5 kernel merge window just ended days ago and there still is two months to go until that stable release, already the lead developer of the Bcachefs file-system is working to get the code merged for Linux 6.6.
Thunderbird 115 Now Available & It Looks Fantastic
As a devoted Thunderbird mail client user for the past nearly twenty years since its first release, I'm elated today by the release of Thunderbird 115.
Intel AVX10: Taking AVX-512 With More Features & Supporting It Across P/E Cores
Along with detailing Advanced Performance Extensions (APX), Intel as effectively a footnote to that also disclosed another exciting addition to find with future Intel CPUs: AVX10. Most notably for consumer use is that AVX10 will enable AVX-512 capabilities across both Performance and Efficient core designs with hybrid processors.
Linus Torvalds: "Let's Just Disable The Stupid [AMD] fTPM HWRND Thing"
Linux creator Linus Torvalds is growing frustrated with AMD fTPM hardware random number generator bugs on recent Ryzen systems plaguing the kernel and has expressed a desire in disabling its use.
Twitter's New "X" Logo Is Reminding Plenty Of People Around X.Org
The most popular topic among the emails I received this weekend weren't of direct technical nature but the number of people pointing out Twitter's new "X" logo and the similarities to the X.Org logo.
RISC-V Is Now An Official Debian Architecture
Debian 13 "Trixie" has been aiming for official RISC-V support and indeed it will happen: RISC-V has now been promoted to an official Debian CPU architecture.
Fedora Workstation 40 Considering To Implement Privacy-Preserving Telemetry
If there wasn't enough Red Hat drama happening in recent weeks, the Red Hat Display Systems Team is now considering to implement privacy-preserving telemetry beginning with Fedora Workstation 40.
SUSE Announces Its Forking RHEL, To Maintain A RHEL-Compatible Distro
Yesterday Oracle published an interesting announcement and doubled down on their intentions of keeping Oracle Linux compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux following Red Hat's controversial announcement last month. Today is another very interesting response to Red Hat's recent shift, this time from the SUSE Linux folks.
Btrfs Deprecating Its Integrity Checker Tool
Btrfs has long provided a built-in integrity checker tool into the file-system driver. However, slated for Linux 6.6 is deprecating of this integrity checker.
New Linux Kernel Code Works On APIC "Decrapification", Suggests Dropping x86 32-bit
There's a lovely new Linux kernel patch series out that's big in working on a major clean-up of the x86 APIC code (or "decrapification" as it's called in the patches) and also bringing up for discussion the idea of killing off x86 32-bit support. It's unlikely the x86 32-bit support will be removed right now, which is "just museum pieces", but as an alternative would be making it SMP-only to at least remove the uni-processor code paths.
Ubuntu Maker Canonical Pulls In Control Of LXD
LXD as the open-source container management extension for Linux Containers (LXC) has long been closely associated with Canonical due to its founding and pushed along by the Ubuntu maker as one of their software offerings. However, it has to this point been part of the Linux Containers project except moving forward Canonical has decided to pull it more into their direct control.
Linus Torvalds Gets Coding To Improve Linux's User-Mode Stack Expansion
Linux creator Linus Torvalds doesn't write as much actual kernel code these days as he used to. These days he's often busy overseeing the upstream kernel development community with reviewing code, managing releases, and chiming in on mailing list discussions. Once in a while though he gets down and dirty with some low-level kernel hacking just as he's done now for Linux 6.5 with improving the user-mode stack expansion code.
Linux Kernel Mitigated For "Zenbleed" Vulnerability Affecting AMD Zen 2 CPUs
It looks like the updated Family 17h microcode this morning isin relation to a new Zen 2 CPU security vulnerability being disclosed. The Linux kernel has also just received a patch for this "Zenbleed" vulnerability for older AMD CPUs.
Oracle Intends To Keep Trying To Make Oracle Linux Compatible With RHEL
Following the stunning decision last month by IBM that they would begin limiting access to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources, AlmaLinux quickly came out working on a path forward and Rocky Linux also shared some ideas how they may continue providing a RHEL-compatible Linux distribution. We've been waiting for Oracle to comment on their plans for the RHEL-compatible Oracle Linux distribution and today they finally issued a statement.
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